Two new lines

Two new things Cam has said to me this week:
You're embarrassing me.
and
You're freaking me out.

Where does she get this stuff?

Naughty & nice list. Does it really exist? I mean REALLY?

So why is it that Camryn, who on the whole, is a great kid, chooses to pick the month of December to bust out the attitude? Is it because she's getting older? Is it because she really wants to know if Santa cares whether or not she is a good or bad? Craig and I have literally started to dial the phone to the North Pole several times this month and she runs after us begging us not to call Santa. She corrects her attitude almost instantly. Until the next opportunity for her to be a total stink head!

I wonder if Santa has ever not come to someones house because they were bad. I mean the toys were loaded in the sleigh and everything and he just decided "nope...this child needs to learn her lesson." Is Santa capable of that? I guarantee he'll be at my house regardless of our threats. Like I said, she's a REALLY good kid, but she's testing our patience this month 10-fold.

A quick lesson

Camryn educated me this morning by saying: "Well mom, actually, I am a woman. Just a little one."

Great weekend

This weekend we made Turkey cookies! (No, Aunt Linda, there isn't turkey bits in the cookies.) Thought it would be a fun project with Camryn and we got mom to participate. Turns out she got a new fancy mixer and was all too eager to use it. All we needed to mix was food coloring with white icing (since we used the pre-made cookie dough), but that was enough. Hope it was worth it mom...LOL!

Yesterday, at Sunday school they started talking about the Christmas story to Camryn's group. They're practicing a Christmas song, and all she said ALL day was "Baby Jesus is born." Over and over and over. There was some tune to it, but couldn't make anything out consistently, and then at the end she would act like she was rocking a baby with her arms. So funny. Even at bed time, she was yelling it out loud. Poor thing gets her singing ability (or lack of) from me.

Cam is challenging us a bit more lately. We've had to bust out the extra dose of discipline with her. She spend her first entire evening in her room last week. And she's been dangerously close to losing shows for not listening and toys from not picking up after herself. I guess she knows we'll follow through so threatening it and then counting to 5 seems to do it. I wonder how long that tactic will work. Craig suggested we get some type of see through box where we put anything she's left out at night into it and she has to see it in there for an entire week before she can play with it again. That's so mean! Although probably would work better than just putting the toy up someplace. Because while that would bother her for a bit, pretty soon it becomes out of site, out of mind, and the whole lesson you're trying to teach is lost.

Spooktober

On Friday, I took off and helped out at Camryn's school party. They had games to play and a parade through the school to show off their costumes to other little kids.

Here she is with her new friend at school "Cammie" although she's a Camryn too. Same spelling! Her teacher says they became fast friends.

And then Saturday trick or treating...
The two princesses. Camryn was Princess Jasmine. Charlotte got to be a purple princess, just like she wanted. The even cooler thing is she got this costume because she has hit the all too coveted potty training mile stone! Yea Charlotte!

This is about how the trick or treating went. Although this is at a house with just a sign and a bowl of goodies. Camryn would let Charlotte scope it out first. Once Charlotte got her candy, then Cam took that as the all clear. At the houses with people, she would walk halfway up the driveway, stop and say, "Go ahead Charlotte". Charlotte would go up and say "Happy Halloween" or "Trick or Treat!" Cam would run up next to her to escape having to say anything. On the times she did go first she'd go up there and freeze. Just staring at the person until they asked her if she'd like some candy. :) Poor Cam. She'll figure it out. Good thing she has Charlotte.

I absolutely LOVE this picture of Riley all bundled up. The costume was for up to 9 months and at 4 months she was technically too long for it. It must have been warm though. She just gave in and napped through the entire trick or treating.

Don't get in the way of Charlotte and her candy!

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On Sunday afternoon we drove to Lone Elk park to hike. We made a scavenger hunt list to make the hike a little more interesting for Cam. She had a blast. Two hard things to find were red leaves, only a couple of trees had them in the park and a flower. Oh yeah, and the Yak, which Cam wanted to add. My favorite find was the stick the size of Camryn. We found one a few inches taller and when we held it up, she said it wasn't the same size as her, so we had to keep looking until she found a suitable match.

Linda and Carl met us there. Craig laughs about Lone Elk park. He says Carl used to ask him every nice Sunday afternoon if he wanted to go there. Craig said he always laughed about it with him. Carl was jealous of my scavenger hunt list idea. He said he wished he thought of that years ago. Ha!

Oh yea, and here's the "lone elk". Craig claims there's just one, hence the name of the park. So I just took a picture of the one and ignored the others hanging around when we first got there. We saw buffalo too!

Pumpkin Patch

The first nice day in all of October. We knew it would be muddy. We new it would be crowded. It definitely was. But Rombach's is big enough that you can spread out. Somehow they never have crazy long lines with all of those people.

When we walked in there was this school bus. Craig and I thought it was funny because they had "Kool Bus" written on the front, which is exactly how Camryn prounounces it.

Last year Camryn didn't want to ride the ponies. We bought a ticket and walked in the gate and she changed her mind really quick. This time, she not only wanted to do it, but sat on that pony while Craig and I stood outside the gate and watched. She wanted to ride one of the smaller ponies, but the lady looked at me and said those were for little kids where the parents could walk next to them. She's just getting so big.

She was completely at ease. She had her rain boots on because of all the mud and kind of looked like riding boots when she was on the pony.

Here she was playing inside a little playhouse while kids climbed on the slides above her. It was kind of a quick getaway from the chaos for her I guess.

Family picture! Poor Craig didn't have his sunglasses so he didn't have a prayer at keeping his eyes open.

We found a section of white pumpkins. They were perfect size for Camryn to pick up. She thought they were really neat.

Whirlwind September & October

Oh my! It's been a long time since my last post. Lots has happened, and just keeping up with life has been tough enough. So this is a REALLY long post. :)

Here are a few football pictures from this year. We've actually missed the last four games :-( so these are from September. My birthday, actually.




I'll go back to late September. Camryn started dance class at school. No, we've not made the plunge and enrolled her in classes at night yet. Just the 30 minute/week dance class that happens while she's at school. That's the most conducive to our schedule. We'll see if she sticks with it and then get more serious. We bought her first pair of ballet and tap shoes. She got to go out in the garage and "break them in." She LOVED it. I'm not certain if she ever gets to wear them at school though. Either she forgets about it or the teacher doesn't have them wear their dance shoes. Cam always tells me that she just wore her regular shoes. That ticks me off a bit since I spent the money on the shoes.

All serious and showing off her ballet shoes.

Then the next weekend, I was scheduled to run in the Roots & Blues Festival 10k. Cam and I drove to Columbia that Friday night to stay the night. On Saturday, it was POURING rain the whole time. But I woke up, drove there in the dark, and finished like it was no big deal. I needed to get that run in because I had the big San Jose run coming up soon. And God bless Liz. When I came back she had breakfast made for everyone. (Loved that peach syrup Liz!) That hit the spot. The rain cleared up and we headed over to the festival, although with the girls it wasn't the easiest to navigate. I didn't get as many pictures as I thought I did from the day. You'll have to visit Liz's blog for that.

Here's how the big girls traveled. Riley was in the stroller. They have it so hard!


This is my Glam Cam shot. She just posed for the camera. Ha!


And I love this picture. A future Tiger, perhaps?

We drove home later that day, exhausted. But that wasn't the busiest part of our weekend. The next day our cat, Jake decided to take an adventure that would result in a night in the woods, hours in the emergency room and a cone around his head. I've provided a lot of detail here, so feel free to skip over it if you've heard the story.

We figure Jake snuck into the garage late one night when Craig was taking the trash out. He's always sitting there waiting for an opportunity and if Craig had to open the door wide enough to take the trash out, he probably slipped through his legs without realizing it. And as it turns out spend the night in the garage. Only we didn't know that. The next morning, Craig had to run to school to take care of a few things. Jake wasn't around, and none of us seemed to notice that he wasn't begging for breakfast or running through the house. Craig came back and I left about 1:00 to return something in Chesterfield (about 20 minutes away). As I was driving down the highway, I noticed paw prints on the windshield. I called Craig to see if he'd seen Jake. I suddenly realized he had not slept at my feet the night before, he had not wished me good morning as our normal routine goes, nor had he asked for breakfast. Craig had not seen him, so he hung up and him and Cam began a search around our house.

Within seconds of hanging up, I heard a thump underneath my car and had a sinking feeling in my stomach that it was a cat. Yep. He had fallen on the highway and I had no way to get him. I slowed down and got over to the shoulder. All I could do was watch him. He got up right away, but instead of running toward the side of the highway where I was, he ran to the median, and then across the westbound lanes of traffic, dodging cars like a Frogger game. Then across the outer road where he plunged into the woods. It happened so fast, and all I could do was watch it from my car. I had no way to save him.

As you can imagine I was rather hysterical. I called Craig over and over and over until he picked up. I found the first highway turnaround and bolted straight to the spot where I thought he jumped in. We dropped Cam off at a neighbors and searched for hours that afternoon in the woods. I knew he wasn't coming out. He was out of his element and had to be in survival mode. There was no way he was just going to greet us right away with the sounds of the highway so close by. Cats are very different from dogs in that regard. They hide. And the worst part was we didn't know if he was hurt or dead.

I was so defeated. My day was completely ruined. All plans were cancelled. Camryn and I went to post signs by the two nearby subdivisions.

Craig went back two different times that evening around dusk and then close to midnight. He figured it was quieter and so he just sat in the woods hoping Jake would seek him out. No luck.

I called local shelters and the APA the next morning. They were supportive, but their voices didn't ring of hope when I told them what had happened. Craig posted a lost cat memo on craigslist and a lady responded with some great tips about cat behavior when they're out of their element. She gave both of us renewed hope that he might still turn up.

When we got home from work Craig decided to take the first shift. Within 20 minutes of leaving he called saying he found him. He didn't have him yet. But he located him. Jake had made his way to a drain pipe and was about 20 or 30 feet into the pipe. Fortunately it was big enough for a human. But Craig's fear was if he went in then Jake would run out the other side. He had brought Jake's foot container and that caught Jake's attention when he shook it. He poured some morsels out at the entrance to the pipe. But didn't attract Jake. Instead field mouse appeared from everywhere at the sound of food. Yuck!

Camryn and I brought the cat kennel up with us so when Jake did finally come out, Craig could put him in the kennel. Craig didn't want to leave the spot for fear that Jake would move again and we'd lose him. He checked out the other side of the drain pipe and it had some wire over it, but not small enough that Craig was confident Jake couldn't squeeze through if he were desperate to run. I offered to climb up the drain pipe while Craig and Cam stood on the other end, but it was too difficult of terrain for Camryn to make it. And it was getting dark, windy and cold. All we had was the one flash light. Craig told us to go home and he would wait it out with Jake. I knew there was no way Jake was moving. And if he was hurt, Craig couldn't see.

I spent the next 45 minutes on and off the phone with mom and dad giving them the play by play. Dad called his contact at the APA for help with rescue tactics, but the best they could do was offer was a contact for animal control that didn't open until 10 the next morning. And even then, he said they didn't have to help, but hopefully after hearing the story would loan us a net or something. I started texting Craig with offers to bring a jacket or quilt or water. Anything to help. No messages back. I had a feeling Craig had grown impatient and decided to just go for it.

Well, he did. He finally called saying he had Jake in the car and was on the way back home. He had crawled up the drain pipe, turned over on his back, put Jake on his chest and with the flashlight between his news, just eased his way down inch by inch.

The emergency room staff checked him out and said he was such a lucky cat. He didn't have a single broken bone or any damages to his organs. He had road burn on his face. The inside of his jaw was bruised, and the pads of his feet were pretty badly burned from the highway. His back claws were ripped out. They said they would grow back but would probably be pretty deformed. They thought he might have sight issues in his one eye, because it was really cloudy, but later said that his third eyelid must have had been activated, which happens when there is trauma to that area. It had retracted by the time he was ready to go home and they said his eye was completely clear. His little paw pads were so tender. The other bad injury he had happened I guess when he jumped into the woods. He had a pretty deep puncture in his back leg. The maggots had already filled up the hole and were reproducing as the emergency staff were cleaning them out. They said there were so many baby maggots that they gave us an extra does of the antibiotic for the next morning (that I had to shove up his little cat butt...ick) to try to kill any that they couldn't flush out.

Here he is several days after when I let him into the bedroom.

That week was filled with taking care of Jake, Camryn coming down with a stomach virus, me getting over a cold, Craig getting one of the most horrible colds I've ever seen him have, mom nearly breaking her wrist and Dad getting sick. If there were any "signs" telling us not to take the trip to San Jose, they couldn't have been more obvious. BUT, the day came, and we flew out to California as planned.

Here, Camryn is having a snack at the airport in Chicago. She chose a chocolate muffin the size of her face. She was such a great traveler. Didn't complain one time. Mom and I were so impressed with her. I was exhausted from the week's events, so it was all I could do to stay awake on the plane (they make me sleepy anyway) and keep Cam entertained. She wanted to do workbooks and puzzles and play with her ponies the entire way.

Here we made it! Cam and I standing in front of the 1/2 marathon sign getting ready to get my runner's packet. Here's what Mom and Camryn did while I was running. A stop at the bakery. And another huge dessert for Camryn. This was called a "princess cake". Too funny!

Here are my wonderful spectators. Sticking it out in the cold weather and waiting for me at the finish line. Camryn wanted to try on my finisher's medal.

Later that evening, we cleaned up and drove up to San Francisco for the evening. We walked around on Pier 39, which was much smaller than I was expecting. I had Navy Pier in Chicago in my mind and this was nothing like that (except the Bubba Gump restaurant and some shops). One of the coolest things we saw were these seals. They were just sleeping there, basking in the sun. Earlier we saw pelicans diving from the sky into the water to catch fish. They'd pop right up and be floating on the water like a duck. Then they'd fly around again until they spotted their prey and took another nose dive into the water. It was funny to watch.

We told Camryn about a merry-g0-round and the moment we arrived at Pier 39, it was all she could do to stay patient enough until we got there. Again, for a three year old, she was so good on this trip!

Mom bought Camryn this little baby seal (although Camryn will fight you on it trying to convince you it's a sea lion). Anyway, she just snuggled with that baby. Pinky even got had to ride stuffed in the suitcase on the way home so Camryn could play with "Silly" or "Lucky", whatever that thing's name is. As we were walking back to our car, she was sitting on these things. I'm sure they have something to do with ships, but I don't what they are. She was calling them chairs and had to try out each one. There was enough room for her and her new dolly.

The highlight (besides the seals) was the drive to the Golden Gate bridge. We were 5 or so miles away and I almost didn't go, but figured when am I going to be back in San Francisco and I would love to see the GG bridge. So we typed it into the Garmin and off we went. Only I would have been happy parking somewhere and getting a good look at it. The GPS took us over the bridge! When we first saw it and I pointed it out to Camryn, she said "Oh! That's the Golden Gate Bridge! Like on Little Einsteins..." and she proceeded to talk about the episode that featured the GG bridge. She's something else. I just shake my head at stuff like that. Anyway, we drove over the bridge, which was free. But then we had to turn around. Which was $6. When we got to the toll booth, the lady said our car lights were off. I panicked. My car's lights turn on automatically so I'm out of the habit. We had been driving all evening and across the bridge without headlights. Paid the toll, turned on the lights and as we crossed we heard "I love the Golden Gate bridge." Mom said that was worth every bit of the $6. Ha!

OK, that's a long enough post for now.

Jay's Birthday Weekend

It was such a fantastic weekend. Great weather, well except the downpour early Sunday morning, but I didn't have an occasion to be outside at that time, so didn't impact me all that much.

The wacky CEO that was running the company I work for stepped down last week. He came in Friday to clean out his office. The two of us there on Friday opted not to be there when he came in, so I got to enjoy the pretty afternoon. Did a little shopping. Took a nap. Then went to pick up my favorite little girl at school so we could eat dinner and suit up in our Wolves gear for the football game.

On our way home I needed to swing by and get cat food. When I told Cam we needed to run by the store she said, "Did you get a cake?"

Jay: "No, Cam. Mommy didn't get a cake."
Cam: "But it's your birthday."
Jay: "No. No cake."
Cam: "Not even cupcakes?"
Jay: "No. No cupcakes either."
Cam: "But we have to get cupcakes. When we're at the store can we get some for you?"
Jay: "That's a nice idea."

So instead of running by the pet store, we opted for Target instead and snagged a box of Hostess Cupcakes. I gave Camryn the money and she checked them out. Then we went home, had dinner and we put a candle in her cupcake and one in mine. Then she sang to me. It was so darn sweet. Rather than rushing, she wanted to take the time and stop and have a birthday moment with me.

Too bad those cupcakes are so small, or the moment might have lasted a bit longer. She inhaled hers. And I ate mine rather quickly as well. I didn't remember those cupcakes being so small. I guess because any that you buy at a bakery or twice that size. You get used to the extra sugar. Kind of scary.

I love you Camryn. Thanks for making my birthday special.

Onto the football game...the Wolves lost, so we'll just leave it at that. Better luck next week. Current record is 3-1. I can't believe that we're going into week 5 of the season already!

On Saturday, we had a very lazy day. I did some cleaning, and Camryn attempted to clean out her toy box. Only the pile of toys she had started of those she no longer plays with started to get smaller at some point and everything wound up back in the toy box. If anything, it allowed her to rediscover some of her toys. And I think I played more than my fair share of My Little Pony this weekend. Ha!

That night, we went to the Mosaics art fair in Old St. Charles. It was a beautiful night. We went last year and wound up eating greasy food, listening to a great Irish band. This year, it seemed like a smaller art fair; and instead of listening to the bands play, we walked down to Little Hills Winery. It was packed on their huge patio, so we figured it might be a decent place to eat. It took a little while to get our food, but with the nice weather and the great music, and hanging out with one another the night was hard to beat.

On Sunday, Cam and I went to visit Grandma Loree and had a fine dining experience at Burger King with her, Aunt Linda & Mom. We enjoyed visiting with everyone.

Thank you family for such a great weekend!

I did it

My first half marathon in 5 years, and I finished the entire race and also beat my best time. OK, so the time thing isn't a huge deal since I'm really slow, but I felt good about it anyway. Ran the full 13.1 miles in 2:17. Craig and Camryn were there to cheer me on in the final stretch.

There was a participant only tent afterwards and they had lots of snacks. I had to snag Camryn one of these popsicles!

Camryn, Charlotte & Riley

Here are a few sweet pictures from today